Influence of pore-scale disorder on viscous fingering during drainage

We study viscous fingering during drainage experiments in linear Hele-Shaw cells filled with a random porous medium. The central zone of the cell is found to be statistically more occupied than the average, and to have a lateral width of 40% of the system width, irrespectively of the capillary number C alpha. A crossover length w(f). proportional to C alpha(-1) separates lower scales where the invader's fractal dimension D similar or equal to 1.83 is identical to capillary fingering, and larger scales where the dimension is found to be D similar or equal to 1.53. The lateral width and the large-scale dimension are lower than the results for Diffusion Limited Aggregation, but can be explained in terms of Dielectric Breakdown Model. Indeed, we show that when averaging over the quenched disorder in capillary thresholds, an effective law upsilon proportional to (del P)(2) relates the average interface growth rate and the local pressure gradient.